Bargain Blasters
Episode of The Alison and Colleen Program Show. Summary Alison and Colleen hunt down titles by a shovelware publisher, but they soon come across the company's insane owner. Plot Alison and Colleen are playing video games at the latter's house. After they warp the disc of the game they're playing, Alison goes to look for a different game, and she finds one hidden in the closet. Colleen claims that she never heard of the game, nor knew she had it, but after remembering hiding away a game she didn't like she believes that she merely forgot about it. The girls play the game and are outright horrified over the poor graphics, cutscenes, gameplay and other crucial details. The two do research on the game but are only able to find the name of the publisher/developer. The next day, the girls are browsing a bargain bin at their local game store and happen to find more titles from the publisher, ConMedi. They decide to buy every copy and hide each away so nobody could get duped into buying them. The CEO of ConMedi learns of this and believes that the girls are major fans of his, but is soon shocked to find them destroying the games. He contacts them online and threatens to harm them unless they spend the night with him, which they reluctantly oblige to. The girls go to his house where he shows how he programs his games. They're unimpressed and try to leave, but find that he has barred the windows and doors. They each play one of his games and the girls sneak away as he manically cackles over killing Alison's character. The girls locate a secret passageway and wind up in the basement, where they find various newspaper articles detailing a maniac who disguises himself as a game programer. Before they could connect both individuals, the CEO finds them and they unknowingly retreat back to the main room. They resume the game and are horrified to find that the main villain is the CEO, who suddenly disappears. He then re-enters the room, dressed up as the playable character from the game that started the whole thing and he presumably goes to kill the girls. They escape, but wind up dying as Alison falls down the stairs and Colleen's face disintegrates at the sight of a Michael Moore speech. The two wake up strapped to a table, with the CEO intending to convert them into characters for his video games, but Alison stalls by convincing the CEO to play a game, which he reluctantly agrees to. They're sent to a world that the game is based on, their memories are practically wiped and the CEO suddenly gains a more friendly demeanor, with him implying that he wanted to make games for everyone to enjoy. He demonstrates it by starting up a game and Alison and Colleen wind up in the jungle on top of a steep dirt mountain, their memories restored. The CEO goes after them and the girls are ultimately cornered in a cave, but they escape by traveling through more of his games. They trick the CEO into going down a hole to reach the goal of the game they're in and he plummets to his death, with all the realities collapsing. We then cut back to the girls in Colleen's bedroom, with everything supposedly being a dream. Alison looks in the closet to make sure the game isn't there and to her relief, it isn't. Colleen questions what happened, but Alison convinces her to move on from it. She agrees to it and the girls go outside. Cast * Aubrey Plaza: Alison * Melissa Fahn: Colleen * Jon Jafari: ConMedi CEO Trivia * The episode references various prominent shovelware developers and publishers, including Data Design Interactive, Blast Entertainment and Phoenix Games. * The episode features a vocal cameo from JonTron. Strange decided to include him in the episode as a statement against the developers of Yooka-Laylee after they fired him for his controversial comments. * The company that goes after Alison and Colleen is called ConMedi, which is intended to be a parody of Comcept, the developer of Mighty No. 9. The fictional game is based on that as well. * First episode to feature a noticeably dark tone.